Friday, July 20, 2007

Pizza on the Grill

C&J had us over for dinner the other night and made pizza on the grill. I'd heard of it and we'd been wanting to try but hadn't been bold enough. Last night we gave it our own try and it was delicious.

The basil was taking over the herb garden so we plucked about 6 cups of basil leaves and made pesto for the base. I froze the rest of the pesto, we'll be eating well this winter too. I cheated and made the pizza dough in the bread machine as it makes a phenomenal dough in less than an hour and a half. Had some lamb in the fridge that we fried up (next time we'll grill it first and slice it onto the pizza) and used fresh tomatoes and parmesan and a bit of english farmhouse cheddar that we had in the fridge. We chopped up olives and sprinkled on some smoky turkish biber spice and 3 kinds of fresh oregano from the garden for the veggie pizza and carmelized some shallots in olive oil for both pizzas.
The pizza dough needs to be rolled very thin and cooked most of the way before the toppings go on. Then you put on the toppings and put the pizza on the grill to melt the cheese and warm them through. Because we have a gas grill, we used hickory chips to give the dough a bit of a smokey flavor. As you can see, we did the the lamb pizza first and started in on it before the veggie pizza came off. A glass of white wine, a salad and we were all set.

3 comments:

  1. Looks fantastic! How do you keep the dough from sticking? Do you cook it directly on the grate or on some foil?

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  2. I oiled the dough a bit with olive oil before cooking. It didn't stick at all. We cooked it on the veggie grate we have. Foil wouldn't allow it to brown correctly.

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  3. Damn that looks good. I'm still dubious about the whole concept but it obviously worked out. (except for the shape, need me to show you how to throw pizza dough? Twas my 1st bonafide job you know.)

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